Originally posted by Pradip Bhat: The salaries of Indian programmers are growing crazily. The real gainers are real estates builders , car manufacturers which charge exorbitant amount of money.

Right!!! The money has gone to the builders...I doubt about car because they are branded and can't change price as easily as builder do.

It would be interesting to see how guys pay EMI in 2010 when they are already getting 6-9 LPA and how much their salaries would grow and how much expenses would grow (everything from grocery to labour are getting way too expensive in my city) by that time.

I am not surprised either. When demand exceeds supply, it is but natural for employees to seek their best deal. And when one compares the salary IT offers with the other industries in India, there is a huge disparity. And that is not healthy for the economy. It's a cycle and I think the salaries in India have peaked.

(everything from grocery to labour are getting way too expensive in my city) - Manish

I was thinking of moving to Pune from Bangalore as staying here becoming too expensive unless your spouse also works and draws high salary.Real estate builders,politicians and shopping mall owners are earning well.Five star hotels are jammed packed with people(Indians and foreigners). Starting salary for programmer has certainly risen.If Honeywell gives 24K,Oracle gives 35K for fresher testers,its natural for people to ask 6L for 3 years experience in Java.

The opposite of "expensive" is "cheap", and "cheap" doesn't just mean inexpensive, though people seem to have forgotten that. There's price and then there's value. If something is low price and low value, we call that "cheap", and we don't mean it as a compliment. If it's high price and low value, that's "expensive". What you really want is a good price and good value, and that's a true "bargain". Too often, we look only at the price and not the value. And get what we deserve.

The science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon is credited with the phrase "90% of all science fiction is crap". Which allegedly he promptly amended to be "90% of everything is crap".

It's the old 80/20 (or 90/10) rule. The talents, skills, and even work ethics are not uniformly distributed. Like an iceberg, the bulk of the mass is under water (or below grade, if you prefer). Being mediocre-to-poor isn't that bad. Just because you're not at the pinnacle doesn't mean you can't make meaningful contributions. And in IT, performance has been observed to be erratic even among the best. Still, it's unrealistic to assume that the more people you add, the more talent you acquire linearly. That's one of the advantages smaller companies have. If there are fewer people, there are also fewer drones.

This sort of more-is-better thinking is especially fallacious when applied out of context. A lot of US companies see 1 billion people at low wages and think "Christmas!". They don't take into account the fact that a large percentage of the population is employed in subsistence farming, so the percentage of people with even basic skills, much less the cream of the crop is not the same percentage as in more developed countries. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of doubt that the really good people in India have mostly spoken for. The schools are trying to churn out more to meet the demand, but like a lot of processes, faster is the enemy of better. The whole thing has all the characteristics of a market bubble, except that instead of money, the commodity in question is talent. We've already been through that once before, with the Y2K labor bubble.

Customer surveys are for companies who didn't pay proper attention to begin with.

All this means is that SAP still has not caught on in India amongst job hopefuls. It just means that for whatever reason aspirants still go the .Net or Java way when picking a domain to work in IT.

Remember, India adds one Australia(in terms of population) each year. I think the general rule of economics is that jobs will go to the lowest wages, to the lowest benefits, to the lowest bidder etc. I do agree with Tim's idea that you get what you pay for, and he raises some good points but I think that is more related to the scope of the project. In projects where hardcore talent trumps everything else, you really do need the 'cream of crop'. In certain projects, you really do need the a balance of affordability, experience and great 5 star reviews.

Unfortunately, with the glut of IT workers due to the boom, and a general oversupply of labor coupled with the sort of work that is being outsourced + willingness to pay lowest wage possible its more about finding cream of crap. I don't see the supply of labour ever ending at least for the next few years.

Taking the example of the h1b visa, the number one complaint is that foreign workers drive down the wages. Look at this from the other perspective. The Lowest bidder with not so great skills and not a lot of experince also has the power to affect and drive down wages. The truly talented would have to adjust his price accordingly to some extent I feel. This is a cycle that would continue until its just not lucrative enough anymore to hire people in a particular location. I don't think India is anywhere near that point int time yet.